Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

We Value Your Privacy

Swinburne University of Technology (Swinburne) through the Social Enterprise Reporting Tool (SERT) study team, acknowledges and respects the privacy of individuals. Given the nature of the online service provided on the SERT website, you may have provided, or be asked to provide, ‘identifying information’ (i.e. information that is unique to you or your organisation, and identifies you or your organisation), as well as information that may be considered confidential or sensitive (i.e. information that is not necessarily unique to you or your organisation, but which you could reasonably expect to be managed respectfully). This policy outlines what information is recorded on the SERT website; the purpose of collecting this information; how the information is used and protected, and your rights and responsibilities with respect to the security of the personal information you provide, as a user of the SERT.

What Information Do We Collect?

Information is provided to the SERT from registered users of the site, through the registration process and the completion of online forms.

The registration process requires all users to provide a valid email account as their username, and a password for this account. All subsequent information regarding site use, such as log in times and dates, page views, and responses to online surveys is matched to this username.

The following information is electronically recorded against the username of SERT users: your responses to the SERT questionnaire.

Users are also asked to provide a valid email address. The purpose of collecting this information is so that you can be contacted if there are any queries or issues with your account; and to enable secure access to your user account, comprising of:

In addition to the information that users provide through their registration and use of the SERT website, users may contact the researchers via the email address: sert@swin.edu.au. By doing so, the research team member will receive your email address and any personal information you provide in your email correspondence.

Why Do We Collect Your Information?

As a provider of an online service, the SERT website administrators request users to provide identifying, sensitive or confidential information for the following purposes:

In order to ensure that the SERT website can securely manage and process data entered by different users, the data you enter needs to be linked to identifying/verifiable details such as your user account.

To enable the SERT website to be as relevant and effective as possible for users, the research team needs to be able to track how user behaviour changes over time, which requires that data is attributable to an individual user.

For the purposes of collating and delivering reports to users, the team also needs to be able to contact you by email, to send you a copy of the report generated by the SERT based on the data you entered into the questionnaire.

Although the user is asked to provide a username and email address, this information is not shared or used for any purposes outside of those described in the SERT website Terms of use.

The data collected by the SERT website will be de-identified, collated, and reported in group format in any publications or presentations arising from this research.

How do we protect your information?

The SERT website study team adhere to the principles outlined in Commonwealth legislation regarding the protection and security of personal information. According to these guidelines, the personally identifiable information that is recorded on the SERT site is used only for the purpose stipulated at the time that the information is collected, and cannot be revealed, disclosed, sold, distributed, rented, licensed, shared or otherwise passed on to any third party, unless: (1) we have your express permission to do so; (2) where required by law to provide information in response to a subpoena or warrant, or (3) in cases where the potential risk of harm, or threat to the safety of a consumer or another, requires such disclosure for the purpose of minimising or negating that risk.

In order to protect the privacy of consumers, the SERT website uses and implements professional and industry standards for the security and protection of personal information. Current strategies that ensure the highest standards of data security include:

The site is hosted in Australia in a dedicated VDC housed within an ISO27001 accredited data centre. Our VDC employs strict access controls and best practice network layer security

Our application has been designed to validate all access and data inputs to protect both the application and database against malicious attacks

When using the SERT, users connect to our site via HTTPS connections, which are more secure versions of the standard http protocol. Our site and the server it resides on are identified and authenticated by SSL certificates in order to use HTTPS, which means users can be assured they are always communicating with the real SERT website.

All personally identifiable data stored in our database is protected by encryption

Access to data through our application is governed by tightly defined role based access protocols

The SERT website temporarily installs “cookies” on your computer while you are logged into the site. These cookies communicate to secure servers, to authenticate access to the website for the duration of your session, and are set to expire when the browsing session ends. The cookies do not collect any information about you, or how you are using your computer, and only serve to ensure that your session authentication has been established.

Your rights and responsibilities

Under the terms of current legislation, you have the right to access, or alter, any information concerning yourself that is recorded on the SERT site. You may request access to this information by emailing sert@swin.edu.au or by clicking the Contact link at the bottom of each web page. If you feel that your privacy has been breached, the contact details for the University’s Privacy Officer are provided below.

In order to further protect your privacy, the SERT team suggest consumers follow these guidelines when using the site, or communicating personal information with us:

Choose a username and a strong password that does not readily identify you

Do not disclose your login details to anyone

Use your browser’s private browsing capability if you are concerned about other people looking at your internet history

Remember to log out after each session

Further information

If you have any questions, issues, or concerns, or wish to lodge a complaint regarding the collection, use, storage, or disclosure of your personal information on the SERT site, please contact the University’s Privacy Officer. Contact details are as follows:

RESEARCH PARTNERS

This web-tool was developed as part of the research program 'Supporting Development and Growth in the Community Sector in Western Australia', which was funded and supported by the Bankwest Foundation. We'd like to sincerely thank the Bankwest Foundation, our participating social enterprise organizations, and the wider social enterprise network in Western Australia for their commitment and contributions to this project.